Animal of the Week January 10, 2005 -- Nerpa the freshwater seal

Phoca sibirica (Baikal seal, Nerpa). I love these animals, I really do, they are so cool. They live in Lake Baikal, the world's oldest, deepest, and most capacious lake. Since doing them as AOTW, my sister and her then fiance went to see them and I was put right by my mate that these aren't actually the only fresh water seals in the world, there are two subspecies of ringed seal that live in lakes in Finland. However, Nerpa's are the only seal with species status that live in freshwater. So I was kind of right. No-one really knows how they got there, that's one of the fascinating things about them.